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Hand-Holding Gloves
No full textThese inflatable gloves simulate two different styles of hand-holding by fillable airbags. The left glove simulates someone squeezing your hand, and the right side glove forms a hand sandwich. Hand-sandwich is a gesture in which someone takes your hand between both of their hands. The term originates from a medical school classroom, where students learn to express empathy toward the patient.
Collaboration with collaborates with the Sheffield BioMedical Robotics Lab (Kripa A Binny and Dr. Dana Damian)
Exploring Urban Change through Owners’ Lived Experiences of Their ‘Underutilised’ Properties
Full text linkThis thesis advances our knowledge about “set-aside” urban property. Academic literature often interprets these places as derelict, vacant, brownfields, and focuses on cleaning up these problems by changing inactive, “rubbish” properties into active, “durable” spaces (Thompson, 1979). However, property owners’ perspectives have been overlooked. To address this knowledge gap, this study examines owner activities in Neepsend, Sheffield, as part of a broader urban ecosystem that included occupants, planners and developers. Neepsend was selected because it is a “low-intensity” industrial and commercial area north of Sheffield city centre. Neepsend has been considered “underutilised” and ideal for “higher-intensity” uses, such as housing. Combining constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014) with Lefebvre’s (1974/1991) Spatial Triad and Rhythmanalysis (Lefebvre, 1992), primary data was gathered using repeat photography walks and semi-structured interviews. This thesis makes a theoretical contribution to knowledge with the Utility Pyramid. Built upon previous studies, this model identifies five sub-categories of “set-aside” property. The empirical findings revealed that “underutilised” property, rather than “set-aside” property, was a critical area of contestation. Landlords were between occupants of organically developed businesses keen to remain in low-rent properties and maximum utility narratives promoted by government authorities. Regardless of their scale of operation, owners of set-aside properties were wary of being negatively stereotyped. When it comes to resisting or complying with top-down plans, the temporalities of owner decisions were complex. Data analysis suggested that juggling multiple priorities was a simple explanation for setting aside property. When deciding whether to hold, buy, improve, or sell their set-aside properties, events in owners' personal lives, their management activities at other properties, and the actions of other owners were all contributing factors. An unexpected finding was the emotional labour involved in landholding. Overall, this research demonstrated how visual cues of seeming abandonment, disguise a wide range of offsite owner activities
Social Impact Bonds: Issues of Identity and Independence for the Voluntary Sector
Full text linkThis thesis explores Voluntary Sector (VS) engagement with Social Impact Bond (SIB) policy agenda in the UK. SIB’s typically involve three parties: an (social) investor, a public agency and voluntary sector deliverers; and often a fourth party specialist intermediary. SIBs aim to encourage a collaborative approach to public service delivery with these different stakeholders coming together to co-design services that achieve both social change and cashable savings to the state. England has been a pioneer of SIBs which were introduced by the 2010 UK Government during a time when VS organisations faced unprecedented and widespread cuts to their funding. At the beginning of this study, the SIB literature was still relatively limited and emerging, but has grown over recent years. Despite developments in the SIB academic literature, there is a clear gap around the involvement of the VS as SIB delivery partners- a gap which this thesis aims to address. Through the investigation of SIBs as a VS funding mechanism, this study sought to understand issues of identity, distinctiveness and independence for VS organisations in relation to the state and other actors. The thesis takes a novel approach to research methods, contributing to the knowledge of methodological strategies for the study of the VS. The research was conducted using a mixed-method research design combining frame analysis, Q method, focus groups and interviews. Through a new institutionalist approach, data were analysed at micro, meso and macro levels to explore the institutional logics at play in the framing of SIBs at multiple levels so as to understand VS responses, agency and decision-making in relation to SIBs. This thesis provides empirical contributions to knowledge around the VS’s relationship with the state, the evolution of the VS’s role in delivering state social outcomes and VS leaders’ attitudes to increasingly market-based state funding models. The thesis contributes to VS theory by finding that Salamon’s Voluntary Failure Theory (1987) is limited in its application on 21st century VS organisations which are delivering social outcomes on behalf of the state. It concludes that the market-based commissioning processes which give access to state funding in fact continue to embed traditional inequitable power relations between the state and VS organisations